Tuesday, April 3, 2012

This nasty anti-1st amendment piece of legislation has cleared the Arizona legislature and is sitting on Gov. Brewer's desk.

We’d all prefer that the internet was a more civil place. For every well-reasoned, considerate comment out there, there a dozen violent, all-caps homophobic rants. But it’s hard to do anything about it. Unfortunately, part of freedom of speech on the Internet seems to be the freedom of huge numbers of people to be jerks.
Arizona, however, which doesn’t have the best reputation for protecting civil liberties, is doing something about it. The legislature recently passed House Bill 2549, which uses broad language that could turn a troublingly large swath of online chatter into a class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by up to 25 years in jail.